Pitting the cherries was the adventure. I can't remember where I learned this tip, but if you don't have a cherry pitter (an undesirable uni-tasker according to Alton Brown) you can go MacGyver! I used a water bottle (a wine bottle would be good too) and a chop stick. I wore gloves too because squirting cherry juice everywhere was unavoidable. You stab the cherry firmly and the pit pops out the bottom. It worked...okay. I think a cherry pitter would have been faster.
I loved the sunshine cut out so much from June's pie, I did it again with this month.
The new thing I tried was a new crust recipe. When I was visiting my sister we were watching Cook's Illustrated Test Kitchen together and they demonstrated their Foolproof Pie Dough recipe. I have two Cook's Illustrated cookbooks and a pile of their magazines, so I hunted for the recipe when I got home.
The pie turned out great!
Bad news: this crust recipe was annoying. There are tons of steps. The dough was in and out of the fridge so many times. I am tired just writing about it. Also, the dough is extremely wet so you have to use tons of flour to get it to the correct consistency. They say it's foolproof. Maybe it is. It certainly tasted and looked good. However, it was not anxiety proof. I am going back to the Barefoot Contessa next month.
Now Bake That!
